Sears, Roebuck and Company (1886-) - The World's Largest Retailer until 1991

[DonRocks]

Sears, Roebuck and Company was supplanted in 1989 by Walmart as the world's-largest retailer. 

Jul 11, 2014 - "Aim Low: The Rise of Wal-Mart, the Fall of Sears, and the Lesson of Disruption Theory" by John Warner on upstatebusinessjournal.com

Yet, I wonder how the upstarts at Walmart - still the world's-largest company by revenue - feel about the upstarts at Amazon, which now has a market cap of over $1 Trillion.

Probably something like this:

[DaveO]

On 11/7/2018 at 10:43 PM, DonRocks said:

Sears, Roebuck and Company was supplanted in 1989 by Walmart as the world's-largest retailer. 

Jul 11, 2014 - "Aim Low: The Rise of Wal-Mart, the Fall of Sears, and the Lesson of Disruption Theory" by John Warner on upstatebusinessjournal.com

Yet, I wonder how the upstarts at Walmart - still the world's-largest company by revenue - feel about the upstarts at Amazon, which now has a market cap of over $1 Trillion.

Probably something like this:

That is interesting.   I haven't read about disruption theory, but there is always room for price cutting.   Reading the article, it was easy for me to see myself in the position of someone digesting all the data Sears had at its disposal in the early 1980's and ignoring anything relative to Walmart.  Oh my.

In the early 1980's Sears purchased Coldwell Banker Real Estate and Dean Witter Reynolds Brokerage.  They wanted Coldwell Banker so they could put a residential brokerage office in all their stores and hopefully sell their customers a house, or sell their customers homes for them.   They purchased Dean Witter, a Wall Street firm whose specialty was retail brokerage so they could invest the money of their Sears customers in stocks, bonds, and funds.     hmmm.   based on the profile of Walmart at the time...that wouldn't have applied to Walmart then.

I was at CB commercial at the time.  I have no idea how those businesses did inside the Sears stores.  I do know that by the late '90's they sold off Dean Witter for a large profit.  I doubt the growth was fueled by retail sites inside the Sears stores though.  They also sold off CB later though I have no idea if the purchase was profitable or not.

Meanwhile starting in the latter 80's Walmart was looking at sites in the DC area for their stores.  (I tried and got nowhere--but they made deals on other sites).  One thing about them is that no entity worked harder to buy land at the lowest price possible.   Walmart was well known to be the lowest priced buyer of EVERYTHING they needed;  merchandise, supplies, services, etc etc.   They have been good at that for decades, not just years.   It has enabled them to be the low cost provider of goods and fueled their remarkable growth.   Of course now Amazon can challenge them on price by simply avoiding stores and the staff necessary for stores.   Disruption, disruption, disruption.

Meanwhile Sears just announced the closings of more stores, including the Westfield Montgomery location.  The Silver Spring/White Oak location is still in operation.  Oh my.  When I first moved to the DC region I lived near the White Oak location and pretty much outfitted my first apartment with cheap crappy Sears merchandise and was very satisfied doing so.  Come to think of it I think there was  a pretty good pizza place at White Oak also;  Sears, a Giant and Pizza--I must have done all my shopping there.

[DonRocks]

2 hours ago, DaveO said:

The Silver Spring/White Oak location is still in operation.  Oh my.  When I first moved to the DC region I lived near the White Oak location and pretty much outfitted my first apartment with cheap crappy Sears merchandise and was very satisfied doing so.  Come to think of it I think there was  a pretty good pizza place at White Oak also;  Sears, a Giant and Pizza--I must have done all my shopping there.

Other than a paper route, Sears White Oak was my first job (I was 15-16), and I used to walk to work.

As for the "pretty good pizza place" ....

[DaveO]

If one reads the last sentence in the first paragraph on the linked page it explains why even lousy Sears has done well in that location.  That is a great location for a shopping center.

[DonRocks]

1 minute ago, DaveO said:

If one reads the last sentence in the first paragraph on the linked page it explains why even lousy Sears has done well in that location.  That is a great location for a shopping center.

Without looking, I remember (twenty-years after this) when they were going to put the first Starbucks in White Oak Shopping Center - the selling point was that there was an extraordinary number of drive-by cars each day. 

I'm not sure if you remember, but Sears had a *huge* Sears Automotive Center there, right across the parking lot from the main Sears - it was just about equal in cubic volume to the department store.

[DaveO]

9 hours ago, DonRocks said:

I'm not sure if you remember, but Sears had a *huge* Sears Automotive Center there, right across the parking lot from the main Sears - it was just about equal in cubic volume to the department store.

I do recall the Sears Auto centers, one at Montgomery Mall and less so White Oak.  I was told by someone who worked there they were extremely busy.

Residential zoning restrictions kept real estate developers from adding a nearby shopping center, especially over a long stretch on well traveled New Hampshire Ave to the North, thus making that center a theoretical gold mine for tenants, a high rent producer for the landlord/owner, and resulted in generating more customers for lousy performing Sears to outlast so many other Sears stores that simply couldn’t compete.   

(Actually every time Sears announces closures I check to see if the White Oak one is on the list or not.)

As to Sammy’s Villa my memory or affection for it was nowhere as strong as yours.....or the similar sounding affection Joe H holds for the original Ledo’s. 

[DonRocks]

Jul 25, 2017 - "The Rise and Fall of Sears" by Vicky Howard on smithsonianmag.com

Note: Wikipedia claims that Walmart passed Sears in 1989; Smithsonian Magazine claims it was 1991 - for now, I'm going with Smithsonian.